The one, and really so
far only, real attack angle that the GOP will exploit to the hilt against 2016
Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton is the sleaze factor. It will
go like this Hillary, and by extension hubby Bill, have such a long and checkered
history of shady dealings, conflict of interest shenanigans, financial nest
feathering, and improprieties that she simply can't be trusted in the White
House. At first glance, recent polls do show that Hillary's image as an
upright, trustworthy presidential candidate has taken a walloping. .

A Quinnipiac University poll is especially
troubling. It found that less than forty percent of voters said that she was
honest. Among independents that can make or break a contender, the figures were
even more abysmal. More than sixty percent of them said no that she couldn't be
trusted.

The Republican
National Committee didn't need polls to tell it that maybe, just maybe,
Hillary's Achilles Heel could be it getting enough voters to hold their noses
at the thought of a Hillary in the White House. Their game plan long before she
declared her candidacy was quite simply to shovel out every tidbit of old and
new dirt it could dredge up against her to torpedo her candidacy There will be
a barrage of videos that they'll push viral that will remind voters of the old
scandals the GOP in the past worked over endlessly to nail Bill and Hillary.
Then there will be lots of new ones that will make much of the continual
carping about the dealings of the Clinton's Foundation. This has been a
particular sore point for the Clintons. Her purported inflated speaking fees,
the constant lambaste that it grubs at money from many dubious sources, and
that it shamelessly uses the Foundation to influence peddle both at home and
abroad.

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Some were
quick to latch onto a report that revealed that Bill was an honorary chairman
of the scandal plagued FIFA's campaign to have the U.S. host the World Cup in either 2018
or 2o22. The implication that Clinton's name on FIFA's bid for a World Cup host
spot implies some kind of wrongdoing is absurd. But that's less important than
just tossing the innuendo out there.

The GOP isn't banking
solely on shoveling out dirt on Hillary to render her candidacy stillborn. They
also bank that the supposed baggage that Hillary carries renders her an
astonishingly divisive candidate. The checklist of the trumped-up scandals of
the past from Whitewater to the Lewinsky scandal, her tout of health care
reform, which was the prelude to the much harangued Affordable Care Act, and
most importantly her alleged cover-up of Benghazi. There was little doubt that
the first chance the GOP got it would seize on a real or manufactured Obama
foreign policy flub and make her their hard target. Benghazi proved to be the
alleged flub and the GOP pounced. In August 2013, the Republican National
Committee rammed the attack home with a half-minute clip of her Senate Foreign
Relations Committee testimony earlier that year on the Benghazi attack. The aim
as always was to embarrass and discredit her not because of her alleged
missteps as Secretary of State, but as a 2016 presidential candidate.

The big
question is will any of this work? The answer is no. There are two things that
back the no answer. Every one of her declared and potential GOP presidential
rivals so far are about as clean a Gene bunch as you'll find. They have no
major sleaze baggage attached to their names so far. Yet, not one poll to date
shows any of them beating her. In most cases, they trail so badly in the matchups
that the 2016 presidential election would be over before the first ballot is
cast.

Democratic
leaders have mostly shrugged off the relentless barrage of personal smears,
innuendos, and carps about her personal dealings as a bad case of the GOP and
much of the media grabbing at straws or sensationalism to taint Hillary. They
are, of course, right. However, this isn't to say that the attack campaign
should be totally ignored. Clinton's favorability ratings have either dropped
or flat lined as she moved steadily closer to declaring her presidential
candidacy. More than a few Americans do take seriously the notion that the person
in the White House must be as pure as Caesar's wife, despite the brutal reality
and knowledge that politics is rough, tumble, and often very dirty business.

This makes it
even more incumbent on Clinton to announce a firm, problem solving, action
program that will tackle head on the big ticket concerns of voters from jobs
and the economy to security. This is ultimately what elections are won or lost
on. The 2016 presidential election will be no different. But that won't stop
the GOP with a big boost from some in the media that hang on every whiff of a
scent of a Clinton scandal from making sleaze the issue of the day with
Hillary.

Earl
Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of
the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. His forthcoming book is:
From King to Obama: Witness to a Turbulent History (Middle Passage Press) http://www.amazon.com/dp/0692370714

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He
is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He
is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly
Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour heard weekly on the nationally network
broadcast Hutchinson Newsmaker Network.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a nationally acclaimed author and political analyst. He has authored ten books; his articles are published in newspapers and magazines nationally in the United States. Three of his books have been published in other (more...)

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